In this work we compare the Gunion-Bertsch approximation of the leading order perturbative QCD radiation matrix element to the exact result. To this end, we revisit the derivation of the Gunion-Bertsch approximation as well as perform extensive numerical comparisons of the Gunion-Bertsch and the exact result. We find that when employing the matrix elements to obtain rates or cross sections from phase space integration, the amplitude by Gunion and Bertsch deviates from the correct result in characteristic regions of the phase space. We propose an improved version of the Gunion-Bertsch matrix element which agrees very well with the exact result in all phase space regions.

• Received 28 February 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.88.014018